Authored by Rodney Southern in Outdoors
Published on 09-15-2009
Trying to catch a wild rabbit in a survival situation is a challenge in it’s own right, yet it is possible. Once you catch the wild rabbit, it is important that you are able to properly clean, prepare and eat it. Eating wild rabbit may seem distasteful to some, but in a survival situation you will find it to be a very tasty meal. As a matter of fact, wild rabbit is considered a tasty meal to some in general. Regardless, preparation and proper handling is key to safely eating rabbit in the wild.
Wild rabbit is not the easiest to prepare properly. You unfortunately have to get a little dirty. The first step to eating a rabbit in the wild is to skin the rabbit. Before you even consider skinning them, you have to eliminate the various parts of the rabbit that can cause sickness. This includes all the organs inside of the rabbit, commonly referred to as innards. These parts of the rabbit are not good to eat as they can make you very sick.
The blood of a wild rabbit can also make you sick, so it is advised to wear gloves that will not allow the blood through when possible. Any protection is better than none, so make due with what you have. Many people will hang the rabbit after opening them up so that the blood will drain. This is not completely effective, but it can help to eliminate excess blood.
Next you have to actually skin the rabbit. While this is not a particularly enjoyable part of the preparation, it is actually not as bad as you might think. Simply take the rabbit and begin at one end pulling the skin firmly in one direction. The skin will come off rather easily once you get it started. When you reach the head or tail, then you should simply chop it off. Then remove the other end as well as these are also not part of most people’s rabbit meal.
When you are finished with the skinning, you should be left with only rabbit meat. Use a sharp knife to cut the meat away from anything else that may be left over such as legs, parts of organs and so on. Take this meat and rinse it completely with water.
Next you will want to build a pit of sorts. Make a fire and gather up two tall sticks each with a Y-formation to the tops. (You can break off branches of this sort and trim them to fit the task) These should go in the ground on either side of your fire pit at the same height. You will then skewer the rabbit and hang the skewer in the two Y-formation sticks. This will hold the rabbit just above the fire, and if not adjust the height so that it does. Take caution that you use sticks that are thick enough that they will not catch fire easily. If you are not careful about this, you will quickly have rabbit meat that is burnt and disgusting.
Cooking times vary depending on the size of the fire and the size of the rabbit. The key here is to make sure that the rabbit is well done. You should always overcook rabbit before taking the chance of undercooking. Undercooking can be very dangerous out in the wild, as you can become very sick.
